Weleda is a small brand, catering to the women's beauty market. Because it is so small, it has to rebuild its audience every single day.
So said Randi Jachino, VP of Marketing, Weleda
North America. "A lot of what we learned as marketers, you can throw out the window," she told our Brand Insider Summit D2C. "There is no more linear process to reaching the consumer. We have to blend
traditional fundamentals with today's realities. We have to be scrappy, flexible and in constant test-and-learn mode."
Weleda started building its audience with a consumer
questionnaire, which it then segmented. Next, said Jachino, they asked questions without segmentation and "baked questions into our research."
After performing a "reverse
segmentation," the brand began to layer audiences until it arrived at 575 above-average audiences with "some sort of engagement measure with our brand."
And who was at the
tippity-top of that list? Women who make New Year's resolutions and are interested in the pseudo-sciences like astrology and horoscopes. Who'd-a thunk, right?
Jachino
described how Weleda tested through "tons of creative and variables. We fell fast, we learned and we moved on.
"From programmatic, we know the top-performing audiences are our
biggest opportunity. We layer on the rest of our marketing mix, specifically social media. Content can only get you so far but influence (social media and earned PR) makes it blow up and grow
sales."
Weleda then identified the conversations about it that were happening on social and focused on categories that made the best fits: health, fitness, yoga, beauty, and
parenting.
Further, the brand mapped those conversations to see who influenced its consumer. "We look for people who have the most influence, not the most followers. This is very
important for a small brand like ours."
An example she cited was an influencer with just 40,000 followers but 23 connections in her network, a makeup artist who is mentioned in
huge beauty publications like Women's Wear Daily and Glamour.